Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1004549
34 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2018 an outside industry speaker comes in and presents an industry topic of interest. No mat- ter where, we tend to draw some pretty large crowds. We have had companies approach us, and say, "Hey, we need your help to go to a local university and develop a curriculum for them." Their thinking is, "We'll just use the local uni- versity to create a PCB design curriculum so we can produce PCB designers." When you go to the university, they are always interested but typically not interested in a dedicated class on PCB design in their curriculum. They would rather PCB Design be integrated as part of the overall engineering coursework. Our approach is to have kick-starter modules that can be self-taught, or taught through mini sessions, and then have actual PCB design principles integrated into the EE curriculum. For instance, we're working with a university located near one of our main offices. They teach a class on signal integrity principles in PCB design and Mentor's working with him on integrating our tools into his class. Ultimately, all of this will transform into a complete set of learning materials targeted for the engineer. My recommendation to compa- nies looking for young designers would be to work with your local universities and encour- age them to put these elements of training into their programs. Maybe it's my own personal past but I'm reluctant to say, "Oh, yeah, just go in and start training your EEs to do PCB layout." This is potentially taking somebody's career and pushing them down a singular path, which I think is going to be problematic. Shaughnessy: Now, these kids have had a cell phone since they were five, so they want the tools to work right out of the box. They turn it on, and they want it to work. Waiting days for tech sup- port to call back isn't going to cut it for them. Musto: You hit the nail on the head. This is a major shift, and disruption, to classical EDA tools. It's a completely different mentality toward using tools today. Since many engineers do not use the tools on a constant basis, usability is now a top priority. It's not that usability isn't important for everyone, but professional PCB designers use the products day in and day out so they learn to get the most out of the flexibil- ity and power of the tools. Sometimes power and flexibility come at a cost of usability. There are many examples of this—even in consumer software. For example, for photo editing, you can use Photoshop Elements for those who are not professionals and Photoshop CS for those in the profession. Photoshop Elements provides much of the power of CS but in a much simpler UI. We need to do the same. This has the inher- ent benefit of scalability as well. Scalability of software tools is also of major importance since, eventually, more power will be needed to handle more complex design challenges. Scalability is also critical in large enterprise companies where designs in the engineering domain feed into a larger system design. In this case, there are also the benefits of data sharing, such as libraries, re-use modules, and general infrastructure. Shaughnessy: We keep hearing about millen- nials being so lazy and wanting a participa-